That was the decade that was...

As we start a new decade, we think back to what has happened over the last 10 years and as every decade passes you realise how much has actually changed.

We started the decade with Gordon Brown as Prime Minister who was replaced by David Cameron later in 2010, with a little help from Nick Clegg. Teresa followed and now we have Boris but we still haven’t left the EU.

January 2010 was the coldest January in 30 years (we hadn’t had the Beast from the East yet) and in April millions were stranded in the ash cloud. Including me, I was stuck in a lovely hotel in Fuerteventura (all expenses paid.)

Newcastle United were playing in the Championship for the first time but managed promotion at the end of the season.

Space Group looked very different. We were working on schools and hospitals across the UK after a huge public sector investment. We had been through a recession and the economy remained fragile. Private sector investment was thin on the ground.

At the time, few would have thought that this would be the most transformative decade ever in construction.

At Space we had moved every project into 3D using Revit and Autocad was long gone. BIM was a relatively new term. We were early adopters and evangelists along with a handful of others but few were listening or interested at the time.

bimstore and BIM Technologies were a twinkle in our eye in 2010 and it wasn’t until 2011 that both businesses were launched. We were also thinking about having a small conference which would bring those thinking about the potential of parametric modelling following visits to Autodesk University over the past few years.

As the decade progressed, we stated to see adoption grow. In 2010, 3D design and BIM were little known but the government thought they were good ideas and in May 2011 it was announced that all government funded projects would need to use BIM by 2016.

This started the development of standards which would allow the sector to progress consistently.

2011 was the first BIM Show Live. We saw there was a need for these early adopters to come together and share thinking and learning. Even the idea of people across the sector working together was unusual at the time.

In February 2011, we had the first event for 120 people at the Business Design Centre in London and the rest is history. In February 2020, we will be holding the 9th edition of BSL in Newcastle with around 450 delegates in attendance.

At Space, as we were using models every day, we could see a need for a library of components. In 2011, bimstore was launched as the first BIM library in Europe and one of only a handful globally. As we start the new decade, bimstore has hundreds of thousands of users as well as thousands of downloads every day from every corner of the world.

At the same time our clients started to be inquisitive about 3D, Revit and BIM. We identified a need for a BIM consultancy and in 2011 BIM Technologies was born. We set up in London and began conversations with real estate investment trusts across the capital. At the time were writing our own BIM execution plans and responsibility matrices before there were any standards at all. We were heavenly dependent on much of the work done in the US at the time.

Our first major project was 240 Blackfriars for Great Portland Estates. Today we have worked on hundreds of projects for fantastic clients.

Space Architects continued to evolve over the decade. Michael Gove put a stop to the Building Schools of the Future Programme which brought much of the sector to a standstill. Education was a huge part of the Space Architects workload so we needed to react quickly.

A couple of years later, the Priority Schools Programme was launched with budgets just half of what they had been before. We now had new skills and were able to deliver schools quickly and efficiently using a standardised approach.

As 2011 had been a major milestone, 2017 became another pivotal year. In the summer, we had the Grenfell disaster which cost 72 people their lives and brought the construction industry under the spotlight.

As we moved towards the end of the year, Carillion started to have significant financial issues and by January 2018 their liquidation had started and the days of huge complex listed construction businesses came to an end.

Embarrassingly none of this was a surprise to those of us in the industry and unfortunately 72 people had to lose their lives and thousands of people had lost their jobs.

However, out of such disaster some good will come. The industry has already started to rethink its culture and is gong through a huge digital transformation. The Hackitt Report into the Grenfell disaster has been well received and everything the report recommended is included in a new Building Safety Bill to become legislation in the new parliament.

Tier One contractors are rethinking their structures and are selling off parts of their businesses, so they are less complex and more transparent.

The last few years of the decade have been challenging as we have faced a global economic slowdown and the uncertainty of Brexit reducing investment.

The 2019 election has given us clarity about Brexit and we now know we will be leaving the EU in January. This gives us clarity and allows us to plan for the future.

It has been a transformative decade and one in which we have seen positive transformation across the sector. At times it has been bumpy, but it is good to reflect and see the positive improvements which are now embedded in our culture.

As we start a new decade there is a lot to be positive about, but that’s for another post… watch this space.